Hoi,

In an ideal world, it is indeed the content of the Wikimedia projects that our public sees. Each project represents a set of editors who contribute to a project. In general, all well meaning contributors are welcome. Some contributors contribute regularly, take pride in it and associate themselves with the project. Some of them actually participate in discussions on talk pages and contribute to the building of a consensus. Then there are the policy tigers, that insist that they are best placed to discuss policies for everybody else and insist that their consensus represents the community. Recently, on the Croatian Wikipedia a group of policy tigers were removed for their insistence of a nationalistic point of view.

When the "community" is given precedence over everything else, we get into hot water. Often their hard fought consensus does not stack up well with the research done on communities in particular research done on Wikipedia. Typically a project is represented by a community that insists on a bias for their project. This is easily recognised in the arguments against activities by the Wikimedia organisation. "We do not need that", "it is against the consensus, see this or that discussion", we should implement a policy and you can read it on "XX.wikipedia.org".

When we allow for a Wikimedia movement, it is much bigger than all these communities combined. It is where out global aims play a role, it is where we strategise for us as a whole. It is where marketing needs to be applied particularly as it is noticable that our biggest project next to Wikipedia, Commons does not get the public it deserves. It is where the predominant restrictive view of Wikipedias as our key focus leads to regrettable results. When we then consider lists, it is shown time and again that English Wikipedia is not able to maintain all its lists and yet a "consensus" prevents WMF from providing list functionality to other Wikipedias because "it is complicated". Who will argue that the bottom 150 Wikipedias in size have the capability to maintain the lists they arguable have a need for and who would deny a local community to accept the functionality that is on a par if not better than what any Wikipedia offers right now? Is it that complicated? Remember that "wiki" means, implies?

The Foundation or the organisation enables our movement. All our projects, communities and chapters. It provides a setting where a consensus is sought for all of us. It is how the 2030 strategy came about. Giving its permanency, it is ideally suited to represent our whole to other organisations and seek how we can best achieve our goal; sharing the sum of all knowledge. It operates by checks and balances, it is where at this time the board of the Wikimedia Foundation plays a key role.

When people consider it dangerous that it is the Wikimedia Foundation that plays a key role in maintaining our values, I invite them to consider the biases that exists in their communities and the insistence to see the implied consensus applied on other communities and projects. My example of lists is a relative innocent example.

In brief, we need marketing and we need to be humble of what a consensus implies.

Thanks,

GerardM

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 at 19:29, Dggenwp <dggenwp@gmail.com> wrote:

Certainly the projects have a role beyond content—in particular, they, not the foundation, are what the public sees. They are what it is needed to publicise (I don’t like to use the term “marketing “ — that’s the way the foundation speaks) and this is a key role of the chapters.

The obvious role of the foundation, besides the basic central services, is to deal with its natural counterparts—formal organisations such as governments and copyright agencies.

I recognise the need for coordination and the possible need to intervene to maintain minimum standards. But these are historically dangerous roles, for “protection “ against potential forces that might oppose our values has an ominous potential also.—
DGG
Obviously I speak only for myself—assume the appropriate qualifications before every phrase

On Jul 10, 2021, at 11:33 AM, Ciell Wikipedia <ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:

Bill/Will mentioned this might be a new organisational chart of the Wikimedia Foundation. Of course, visuals differ depending on what you are trying to visualize.

This one for instance would be more along the lines of what you, Dgg, are mentioning: how the different parties are involved in our projects. This one would be more about how content on the projects is governed, and the different layers in responsibilities we have. This one is more about how content is added to projects (example in this case: Wikimedia Commons): this is a visualisation on the parties that re-use our content outside of the projects.

It would probably be impractical (or impossible even?) to put everything in one visual without the purpose of the illustration becoming too broad, and the chart or visual therefore surpassing its purpose (visual support for a concept).

Vriendelijke groet,
Ciell

Op vr 9 jul. 2021 om 23:16 schreef Dggenwp <dggenwp@gmail.com>:
The projects are the route by which content is added to Wikipedia. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to have an organisation—the purpose is to have and distribute free content. Everything else is superstructure—everything except the individual volunteers and the projects. This superstructure can be important, but not essential — the volunteers are capable of organising themselves and maintaining the projects. The foundation by itself is capable of almost nothing, as it doesn’t add content. The chapters are of value, primarily in recruiting contributors—without that, they’d just be social clubs.

The volunteers and the projects to which they add content are what matters. The three key functions of the organisation are maintaining MediaWiki (but that’s a volunteer effort also) in raising the small amount of essential funding, and the critically important political work of supporting freedom of the internet and of speech more generally. But our influence for this is because people in the world use the content the volunteers add to the projects. The structure must be organised around them. We are here to build an encyclopaedia.

On Jul 7, 2021, at 12:59 AM, Željko Blaće <zblace@mi2.hr> wrote:

On Tuesday, July 6, 2021, Ciell Wikipedia <ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Bill, I always find organisation charts very much enlightening, and have been missing something like it for the WMF for some time now.

I feel the same. We need much much more of diagramatic content and higher level of organizational understanding for all Wikimedia contributors.

I think all the departments of the WMF-side are equal, right? For instance, legal has no higher 'status' then fundraising or research: employees are equals, just with a different function in the organisation.Therefore all the different departments should be presented in a horizontal line, not a vertical one, like in this one for example.

Kind of good point, but maybe scale (same size) is enough to represent equals, rather than direction/orientation? Not an expert.

BTW.
.svg file export would be best
for the posibility of translation
within Wikimedia Commons ;-)

Best, Z.

Vriendelijke groet,
Ciell

Op di 6 jul. 2021 om 01:03 schreef Bill Takatoshi <billtakatoshi@gmail.com>:
Earlier today I tried to predict what the WMF org chart will look
like, but I wasn't confident about my suggestion, so I created a new
email account, subscribed it to wikimedia-l, and tried to send from
there. I learned that new subscribers are moderated, which seems
sensible given the level of trolling and disruption, and have since
improved the prediction and become more confident about it. I have
since learned that HTML email with embedded email attachments aren't
allowed either, so, Moderators, please reject my earlier anonymous
submission(s).

This is what I predict the Wikimedia organizational chart will look
like in one year's time:

https://i.ibb.co/HPzpqLt/WMF-orgchart.png

Please critique it! If you are running for the Board of Directors, I
am especially interested in your critique of this prediction.

Thank you!

-Will
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